Grass
by Yriels Bane
Summary: A dieing hill, poisoned by sorrow
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing of which you see here apart from the crappy plot

Yuffie knelt down in the short grass, feeling the yellowing blades dance numbly across her calloused hands. She looked up into the deep night and saw Omega's skeleton highlighted by the moon. The tears started to fall as she remembered him. After Omega had been defeated, Chaos had returned to the life stream, taking along with him Vincent's other demons, ready to be born again when Omega's true time came. He had been left as a normal human, with the only sign of ever being different his red eyes. But he had acted the same, treated himself as though he would still heal in an instant, gone off chasing monster's terrorizing towns, being the dark angel. But every time he returned to the Nibelheim manor he had another set of deep cuts and scars.

Yuffie had decided to skip out on Wutai and take a holiday. She had stopped off in Cosmo Canyon, Edge, Coral and Rocket Town. Before she finally decided to see if Vincent was about, she had looked everywhere apart from Nibelheim, why would he want to go back to that dark run down place? She had tried Shinra before there. She had seen him sitting propped up by the wall, blood pooling around him, breathing slowly.

Yuffie tugged at the grass, rivers running down her cheeks. She hadn't been so scared in that since she had almost lost her father to the Deepground Soldiers. But that had only been the first time of many, times seeing him heavily wounded. She had seen it herself and as she later found, so had the rest of AVALANCHE. No-one could stop him, the only way would be to lock him in a room, they had tried that once. His screams haunted her to this night. She had tried.... other methods to get him to stay, she had grown into a beautiful young women and tried to comfort him. The crush had developed during the deepground incident when she had saved him and the then seen the conviction in his eyes. He had never really returned the affection but had accepted the comfort, but never stayed long enough to heal fully. She had started staying at the Nibelheim manor, waited for him to come home bloodied and weary, she would patch him up as best she could and share his bed.

Then came the night he had come back, a week past and she became frantic calling AVALANCHE, even emotionally blackmailed Shinra with the invasion of Wutai. Eventually his body was found in the ruins of Midgar, a large portion of his Torso missing and no heart beat. When she had seen the body covered by a sheet being wheeled into the Shera she had run over and tried to climb on next to it.

Her body curled up on the hill, she let it all seep out of her, like she had every night since she had seen his corpse. It had been bright green with flowers when she first came here, it was though her sadness poisoned the ground like Mako. Turning beauty to ugliness just like he had done to her, twisted her and destroyed her. Because he couldn't accept help or save himself.


	2. Chapter 2

As he looked into the mirror, Vincent sighed at his red eyes, a remnant of the past just like the rest of him. Today was going to be his final mission before he gave up one last favour to Gaia then he could settle down. Pulling his cape up around he he buckled it slowly using the delicate metal claw. He had retained it after the demons left as it was surgically bolted to his arm losing the claw would mean losing his forearm. Strapping Cerberus to his hip, he winced as a sharp pain ran through his back. He was getting too old for this.

Since the Deepground incident Vincent had spent his days rebuilding the world the only way he knew how, taking out human and monster threats to stability. He quickly realised that he was nowhere near as strong as he was before, his reactions were slower and that he couldn't risk taking the slightest bit of damage because he could quite easily bleed out, but he never quite got

used to it. But if he didn't who would protect the world, Tifa was busy with her orphans, Cloud needed a personal stake to understand a situation, Reeve and his WRO were still reeling from Deepground, Barret was busy with Coral, Cid could never stay one place long enough to hear all the rumours of monsters attacking merchants and Red was in his safe place of Cosmo canyon reading all the time. That only left Yuffie but Vincent could never bear to see her hurt, she was too young and too beautiful.

He could remember the first time he realized he had a crush on Yuffie, when he had woken up dazed, in his bedroom with her glaring down at him. He hadn't seen her since his 'Vincent's-not-dead_' _party. She had given him a pretty good shouting at, she was so unlike Lucrecia. Vincent had instinctively disappeared again after seeing Yuffie, years of viewing himself as a monster because of the ones in head had caused to him to isolate himself to protect others. And he had succeeded at keeping her away from a while, until he appeared in Edge to be stitched up by Tifa for his latest batch of cuts. She had told him Yuffie had been there and that she,Tifa, had told her everything about every time he appeared at one of Avalanche's doorstep for some form of medical treatment. The next time he returned to the mansion he had found Yuffie there, she had shouted again and even pushed him up against a wall, before she noticed him wincing as she put pressure on one of his wounds. As soon as he was well enough he ran again, but this time felt something painful deep inside of himself as he ran from the one he cared about most.

When he returned to the old building again he was instantly bundled into a room by the members of Avalanche, for the first few days it hadn't been too bad everyone had come to visit and it was rare that he was alone but eventually the room reminded him of darker days and some of his repressed memories began to surface as he was left to think, alone in his mind, something he had not done since the demons had been implanted in his mind. Apparently it had taken 2 hours of soothing noises from Tifa and Yuffie along with a mastered materia to get him to stop screaming. He stayed longer this time basking in Yuffie's affection as best his personality would allow, before he felt the itch again and returned wearied and bloodied again, this cycle went on for months he noticed Yuffie was always in Nibelheim now, waiting for him to get back. The she started trying to keep him there using her more feminine methods and it worked but he always ran eventually, scared of hurting her.

But she was worth more than that, so this would be his warrior spirit's coup de grace. A simple hunt and kill in the ruins of Midgar. It was a low danger, and then he would have the rest of his mortal life to spend with Yuffie. He smiled and stepped out of the gates of the mansion looking up at the hill where his favourite flowers grew, it all seemed brighter as he walked away for the last time.


End file.
